angharad_gam

 Well, technically he is renting it from school. It is very shiny. And extremely loud. 

This is a rather sudden development. He never showed much interest in music as a child (unlike Ash who has been learning various instruments throughout primary school). Then last year he decided to teach himself guitar (via YouTube). And now he has signed up for instrumental music lessons at school. Learning the trumpet. Apparently he wanted to learn the saxophone, but when he tried out for the classes they said he would be better at trumpet. Which is odd because playing the trumpet requires a bit of a trick (you can't just blow into them), but it seems he has the knack. 

I can see I may be falling into a pattern of only posting here when I am sick or bored or both. But life has been fairly quiet recently. Work has been keeping me moderately busy, with a trip to Canberra and sporadic filling in for my boss. Otherwise we are on the run down to the end of the year, and starting to think seriously about what we are doing for Christmas (which will be at our place this year - definitely no last minute rushings off *crosses fingers*). Maybe I will try and get in a food post about our plans between now and then. 

But, yes, I am sick. Liam had a bit of a cough at the end of last week, and I started feeling a bit tickly in the chest on Sunday. By Sunday evening I  had a raging sore throat and had almost completely lost my voice, which persisted through most of Monday. Ashwyn was highly delighted to discover that I couldn't speak when it came time to try and tell him he needed to go to bed. 'You sound terrible, Mum,' he said. 'Maybe you shouldn't try and talk.' Getting laryngitis when I have a cold is not terribly unusual for me, but having it persist for more than a few hours is. Anyway, fortunately that has mostly settled down, but I am back to coughing quite a lot, and poor Andy is sleeping on the couch so I don't keep him awake at night. 

Aside from this, I finished my completionist, imported world-state playthrough of Dragon Age: Inquisition, which ended up being about 125 hours long (I had skipped some of the DLC on my first play through, and skimmed over some parts of the game). I am still completely wrapped up in this game, and I am hanging out for the next one now. That there will even be a next one is still an unconfirmed rumour, and it is unlikely to appear before the end of next year, if then. I am glad I didn't get into this series in 2014 when DA:I originally came out!  Andy has convinced me to give the original Mass Effect trilogy another go. You may recall I had trouble getting into this when it was first released, but I found it a lot easier this time round and finished the first game yesterday (it wasn't a huge game). 

Stuff I have been reading lately: Provenance by Ann Leckie (set in the same universe as her Raadch books, but not about them - I liked this a lot), The Southern Reach trilogy by Jeff Vandemeer (I only just started the second book of this - it is very weird and somewhat unsettling. Andy liked it a lot, but I am still waiting for it to grab me by the throat). Also, I thought I would try the Lord Peter Wimsey books by Dorothy Sayers, as I have been on a bit of detective fiction kick for a little while now. I have to say that as far as 1920's detectives go, I prefer Phryne Fisher, but then she has the benefit of being written by a modern author for modern readers, while the Lord Peter books are nearly 100 years old now.

The Spring glories of the garden have passed on, and it's starting to get into the kind of weather where it is too hot for gardening, but that matters less because it is also too hot for weeds to grow. 

Erin is in the middle of exams. This is the first major exam period of her schooling (they seem less keen on them than when I was in high school), and she is stressing out a bit. After that she will be done with school for the year, and then she only has one year left (I swear five minutes ago she was a baby). Liam has now just slightly edged me out in height, and given that Ashwyn is already up to my nose I am still betting on my proposition that I will be the shortest in the house by the time he is 12. I am already the person with the smallest feet. 

I have had the week off, it being the last week of school holidays, and also having looked at my leave allowance and decided I could totally do it and still take three weeks off at Christmas. And it's been a pretty good week. It's been very relaxing, and I've even managed some 'quality' time with the kids (as opposed to just having them annoy me). So what have I gotten up to?

Last Saturday, since it was forecast to be quite warm, I decided to skip grocery shopping and take the kids to the swimming pool. For some reason I could only persuade one of them, so Ashwyn and I had a lovely afternoon at the pool. I think it actually did my ankle some good too.

On Wednesday I went to visit irreparable at her new(ish) house, where we drank great volumes of tea and admired her garden in the spring sunshine. She gave me an inkle loom, which is pretty neat - now I just have to learn how to use it. I have been holding off making early period garb for a little while now for want of suitable and appropriate decoration (who wants a beautiful, hand-sewn silk bliaut with cruddy plastic store-bought trim on it?), so hopefully that will open up my garb range a bit.

On Friday we drove up to Gumeracha and had a picnic and then took the kids up the Big Rocking Horse (or at least, Andy took the kids up and down the Big Rocking Horse a couple of times, and I sat at the bottom in the shade). We missed blossom season, but it's still very pleasant up in the hills at this time of year.

In between I did a couple of jigsaws, played some Skyrim, made paper planes with the kids, did some sewing and some gardening, and generally enjoyed the lovely weather. I really am very fond of Spring, so long as I am loaded up with anti-histamines.

Back to work on Monday, which I can't say I am entirely looking forward to, but I shall only be there for one week as the week after that I am heading to Canberra for a whole week for a training course. Then only six more weeks and I shall be off on Christmas holidays. So there's that...

Now, about that tax return...

And believe it or not, Santa has delivered...

I've been meaning to update for a while, but lazing about on holiday keeps getting in the way. There are a few things to write about, but let's start with the house...
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The pox has descended on our household - the chickenpox that is. Both Erin and Liam have chicken pox. Poor Erin has it quite badly, although she seems to have turned a bit of a corner today. Liam seems to have been building up to it more slowly, and is just starting to get into the full itchiness today.

In addition to this, Ashwyn spent most of Sunday night coughing and then most of Monday throwing up.

I am co-presenting a seminar on Friday, and both of my other co-presenters have been away for much of the last two weeks.

I am exhausted.

Liam just got up and said:
"That was a really unusual nightmare. It was all about Mario and DOSBox."

Not because anything exciting is going on. I had a lot of colds in June, and so I've been busy trying to not get sick again, and house-hunting (still - but possible end in sight), working, reading books (lots by Elizabeth Bear), and making jewellery. Might post some pictures soon.

We went to Avcon today. Andy was just going to go and take Erin and Liam, but then we thought Ashwyn was old enough, so we all went as a family, and it was...surprisingly uncatastrophic. Now I have the costume making bug.

A month or so ago we took Ashwyn to the dentist (probably one of the times he tried to knock his teeth out). The dentist said it was time for him to start using adult toothpaste (children under 6 are supposed to use a low fluoride toothpaste). So we started trying to get Ashwyn to use adult toothpaste. This was a slight problem because it turns out Ashwyn does not like adult toothpaste. He doesn't really like mint, so the very strong mintyness of toothpaste is a bit much for him. And oh, the performance we would have at toothbrushing time. "It's poisonous!" he would cry, and scrape the brush over one or two teeth before spitting profusely and dramatically. Or the toothpaste would turn up later smeared on the towels, or the furniture, or dropped in lumps in the sink.

So last week when I went shopping I thought I might get some gel toothpaste or something that might have a milder flavour. I was not very hopeful that it would help because most toothpaste is still pretty minty. But lo and behold there was sparkly Spiderman toothpaste. Sparkly Spiderman toothpaste is for kids 6+ and it is sparkly. And also has Spiderman on the tube. So the flavour is irrelevant apparently. Toothbrushing crisis averted. Also there are now far fewer mysterious smears of toothpaste materialising on various random surfaces.

...I just don't seem to have had much to write about lately. Actually that's not quite true. Stuff has been happening, I just haven't felt any great urge to rush to LJ and write it down.

I suppose the biggest thing is that the inheritance we have been waiting for (and waiting and waiting...) has finally cleared, and I have been looking at houses. Mostly online so far, but I did have an afternoon of driving around open inspections a couple of weekends ago.

We might have looked at some more last weekend, but Ashwyn came down with a fever very suddenly last Sunday, and that was the end of all our plans for that day. With the spectacular sense of timing most kids have, he managed to hold off throwing up until right in the middle of Dr Who.

Work seems to have been occupying a lot of my mental energy lately, so I am quite happy to be taking the next week off. Slightly less happy that Andy is heading off to Queensland tomorrow to spend some time with his sister, but I'll cope.

I have also decided that I spend too much of my time reading blogs on the internet, and need to devote more to reading actual books, and using up some of my fabric/yarn stash. So far the reading part is not going too badly.

For those of you who don't recall what happened last time we tried to do Fringe stuff as a family you can find that account here.

So we thought we'd try to go to the Waymouth St street party last Friday night. Except when we got there it was a lot more crowded than it had been the week before (I guess word got out) and a lot more adult seeming (fewer street performers, and more people just standing around drinking). So we thought we'd go get dinner somewhere else. We went over to Hindley Street and trying to avoid the lure of McD's, thought perhaps we'd just keep going until we got to Rundle St and go to Brunelli's.

Then Andy saw the Pancake Kitchen. And so we went in there. Boy was that a mistake. But we didn't realise it until we were in there and sitting down, and it seemed a bit rude to run away then. Someone had told me the Pancake Kitchen was a shadow of its former self. Or rather, it was exactly the same as its former self, and the years hadn't been kind. It looks like the decor hasn't been changed for about forty years. Well, Liam was upset because he had been promised pasta or pizza, but was placated with a banana split. Ashwyn chucked a wobbly because he wanted chips (believe it or not, these were not on the menu). He would not be placated with promises of pancakes or icecream (he is a single minded monkey sometimes). Although he was happy enough to consume a large portion of the very enormous banana split when it turned up. Andy and I ate some greasy things. Then we went home.

We were also planning to take the kids to the Holden Street Theatres' Shakespeare for Kids series to see a Midsummer Night's Dream  on Sunday, but alas, I was a bit slack about booking and by the time I got around to it, they were sold out. They are doing Hamlet on Saturday, but regardless of them saying their productions are aimed at ages 5-15+ I can't see Ashwyn sitting through Hamlet (at least not until the part where they all get around to slaying each other horribly). And a bored Ashwyn is a dangerous Ashwyn.

So not really what I hoped for, but certainly not as catastrophic as last time. Maybe next year we might actually have a cultural experience.